The first weekend of the Tekken 8 Closed Network Test (not a beta, as noted by Bandai Namco numerous times) has come and gone. Roughly 40,000 players got to sample the upcoming fighter during this PS5 exclusive phase, with the dev team welcoming any and all feedback.
But you know how these things go. The test period only ran for three days, but that hasn't stopped some players from jumping the gun, and expressing concern over new mechanics like the Heat system, chip damage, character movement, and just about everything else.
Thankfully, it sounds like Bandai Namco's on top of it. Typically talkative Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada has been replying to fans on Twitter, in an attempt to address both positive and negative feedback. His posts have actually been pretty insightful, with Harada emphasising the fact that this is just a network test, and that there's still a lot of work to be done.
"This test was dedicated to network functionality by the game in its bare-bones state," he writes. "As mentioned in previous tweets, damage, overly long combos, chip damage will be heavily tuned, and the game system in general will undergo various changes before release."
In other words, players shouldn't be taking the gameplay balance too seriously at this stage — but we can at least understand why people might be eager to share their opinions. Having played the test all weekend ourselves, we're confident in saying that the test felt very polished. Perhaps not in terms of balance — as noted in our Tekken 8 preview — but in terms of visuals and overall feel. There's now a lot of speculation regarding the game's release window, because the quality of the test build really does suggest that it can't be that far off.